This Woman's Work
by Magdalena Amaretto Watson
Summary: There is more to Marissa Cooper than meets the eye...


Marissa stepped toward the balcony overlooking the shore, the moonlight falling on her face and deep golden-brown hair, which was nearly black in the darkness against her light skin. Newport Beach was perfect on nights like this, when all that existed was a silvery moon and milky ocean, the stillness only broken by the gentle lapping of excess surf. On nights like this, Newport and all its trappings actually seemed worth it. She sighed, raking a hand through her hair. When had she become so dissatisfied with everything? When was the last time she had actually looked around her? When was the last time she had a night like this- to herself, to think?  
  
It was like, when she was surrounded by her friends and family, she could actually believe that her life was great. It was a thinly veiled façade, but she actually spent effort convincing herself of this one completely untrue idea of happiness in her life. But then, there were those alone times. Those inevitable moments in the day when she didn't have the shoulder of anyone to lean on, when Marissa had to do it on her own. And she didn't like to do it on her own. She needed that support cushion of people who would make her life seem full. Even if there wasn't anything there, she needed that illusion. It was all she had left. Playing the over- achieving daughter role wasn't good enough anymore.  
  
She shook her head. When she was alone, she needed drinks to keep her sane. Just one quixotic, zesty taste of it and she'd be O.K. again. She wouldn't be lonely Marissa Cooper, self-pitying and self-serving. She'd be "Coop", with the cute Prada handbag, new jeans, great hair, and sweet, handsome boyfriend. All she wanted to do was drown her sorrows away and be in Luke's arms and everything would be forgotten. Including herself. Emerson always said you had to be free of the self to truly live. Or was it Thoreau? Only problem was, once Marissa became "Coop", she could hardly remember anything. There was losing the self, and then there was losing your identity. Marissa was swimming somewhere there. She'd wake up the next morning with a hangover pounding between her eyes and sweaty clothes on her back. The past twenty-four hours would be a crazy vortex of light and too- loud music, color, and flashing shapes, giggling, plus things that made no sense, but she was almost certain that they were true.maybe.  
  
Marissa's eyes drifted over to the Cohen's backyard, a beachfront with an identical view as the Coopers. They were nice people, good people. They had it all right. No loss of identities, financial failures, emotional breakdowns, or staying out too late. Seth barely went out at all, at least that's what she'd gathered. Marissa smiled wryly. Seth Cohen. One person who she had lived next door to forever and just a few days ago had finally gotten to know. Who knew there was someone so smart, funny, and cool living next door to her all those years, and she'd simply not noticed him? He had been standing in complete alignment with her blind spot for years. He seemed happy.he didn't have her supposed desperation to fill endless voids and emotional capacities. Why couldn't she be like that?  
  
They were all right, the Cohens. Unlike her family. Hers was falling apart at the seams, and her parents wouldn't admit it.  
  
And that night when she said all those things to Ryan.her stomach dropped as she replayed their conversation in her head. The memory was a hazy, fading moment in time, candlelit and glowing. She was sober. But it would've been easier to forget such a moment if she hadn't been. Instead, she remembered everything. The music in the background- "Hallelujah" by Jeff Buckley. The song that reminded her oh-so-much of him. Where he was standing in the room. His smell. The color of his shirt. Even the way his hair was. It was all burned into her mind irrevocably. Then it melted into tears.  
  
She hadn't meant to sound so Days of our Lives. She hadn't meant anything at all. All she wanted was to see him, see those probing eyes that left her defenseless, that seemed to question the very essence of her soul. The eyes that were both an aphrodisiac and a curse to her. They were the elixir she thrived on. But the room had swallowed her whole, and suddenly words came tumbling out of her subconscious, breaching a line she hadn't even known was there.  
  
Tears. The steering wheel. The road, blurry and flashing.  
  
Then his face again when he walked out of Luke's car. Luke, of all people. God, Luke. It was like some crazy demented dream world that went from blissfully perfect to the sublevels of hell in zero to sixty. Her life had become a million times more scary and nightmarish than it had if Ryan had never set foot in Orange County.  
  
But could she live in a world without Ryan Atwood? Without the eyes that threatened to change her world?  
  
She thought about Luke, and Seth, the Cohens, her parents, her sister. Newport Beach, and the world outside of it. The world, she admitted, she barely knew.  
  
"Who are you?"  
"Whoever you want me to be."  
  
"What do you think of Newport?"  
"I think I could get in less trouble where I'm from."  
"You have no idea."  
  
"You're a little far from 8 Mile."  
  
"My mom's, kind of a train wreck."  
"So's mine."  
  
"So you like punk, huh?"  
"I'm angry."  
  
"We're from different worlds."  
  
"This song reminds me of you."  
  
The answer was so obvious; it hit her in the face with its boldness.  
  
No.  
  
And then she cried again.  
  
~finis~ 


End file.
